Saturday 17 March 2007

Aristotle;student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great


With Islamic and multi-faith lunacy floating, some thinkers are looking beyond even Christianity to get a new wave of thought. Much of Aristotle's work was mixed with the ethics of Christianity however.

Aristotle (born 384BC-322BC) along with Socrates ad Plato was one of the most influential of the ancient Greek and made foundations into Western philosophy as we know it.

Aristotle defined philosophy as "the knowledge of being." Educated as a member of the aristocracy,he furthered his education at Plato's Academy. He left after Plato's deathin 347BC and travelled to Asia Minor where he carried out research on the island of Lesbos on botany and zoology.

Aristotle returned to Ahtnes in 335BC and established his own school, the Lyceum. During this time he composed many of his works, for the most in text and lecture notes to be used by his students. Among the most important are Physics, Metaphysics(or Ontology), Nicomachean Ethics, Politics, De Anima(on the soul) and Poetics. Although connected in many basic ways, these works differed in style and substance.

Aristotle studied almost every subject possible and made significant contributions to most of them.

Aristotle was likely to be the last person to know everything there was to be known in his time.

Upon Alexander's death in 323BC, anti-Macedonian feelings in Athens again flared with Eurymedon the hierophant denouncing Aristotle claiming he did not hold the gods in honor. Aristotle fled the city to his family's estate in Chalcis, explaining,"I will not allow the Athenians to sin twice against philosophy." However, he died there of natural causes within the year. He asked to be buried next to his wife.

Aristotle defines his philosophy in terms of essence, stating "the science of the universal essence of that which is actual". Pllato had defined it as the "science of the idea", meaning by idea what is called the unconditional basis of phemomena.

In Arisotle's terminology, the natural philosophy of the natural world corresponds to motion, light, and the laws of physics. These subjects became the basisi of modern science many centuries later when studied through a scientific mehtod. Lately, the term philosophy has come tho mean metaphysics. In Aristotle's time ,philosophy was taken to encompass all facets of intellectual inquiry.

Aristotle makes philosophy coextensive with reasoning , which he also called "science". "All science(dianoia) is either practical, poetica or theoretical". By practical science he meant ethics and politics, by poetical science he meant the study of poetry and the other fine arts, by theoretical science he menat physics, mathematics and metaphysics.

He defines metaphysics and philosophy as "the knowledge of immaterial being" and calls it "first philosophy". Logic was regarded as a preliminary study to philosophy.

Aristotle's conception of logic was the dominant form of logic until the advances of mathematical logic in the 19th century. In the Critique of Pure Reason Aristotle's theory of logic was a core of deductive inference. Logic seems to have emerged from dialectics, the earliet philosophers used concepts like reductio ad absurdum in discussion but never understood their logical implications. Plato had difficulties with logic, he had an idea for constructin a system for deduction but was never able to construct one.

Aristotle called laoic "analytics", logic he explained was dialectics. Most of Aristotle's work is probably not in t's original form but edited by students and later lecturers.

Aristotle's Metaphysics contains observatons on the nature of numbers but made no original contributions to Mathmatics.

His writings on science are largely qualitiative not quantitative. From the beginning of the sixteenth century, scientists began applying mathematics to the physical sciences and here Aristotle's work was inadequate. He lacked concepts like mass, velocity, force and temperature. He had a notion of what speed and termperature was but no quantitative understanding of them, partly due to not having basic experimental apparatus llike a clock or thermometer.

"The laws of the universe" reach from simple observation to over-stretched reason. Today the validity of hypothesis requires more rigourous experimentation. He couldn't see the relationship of maths to physics. In the 3rd century the dominant view was that the Earth was the centre of the universe(geocentrism). This view has later been repudiated.

His advances were that he founded logic as a formal science and created foundations to biology that were not superseded (in the West) for two milennia. He also introduced the fundamental notion that nature is composed of things that change and studyng changes can provide useful knowledge.

The Material Cause is that which comes into existence from its parts,constituents, substratum or materials, forming the whole(system, structure, compound, complex, composite or combination).

Chance and Spontaneity

Chance is the incidental cause of accidental things. Chance can only apply to human beings, it is the sphere of moral actions.

Aristotle concludes that a particular substance is a combination of matter and form.

Five Elements

#fire, which is hot and dry

#earth, which is cold and dry

#air, which is hot and wet

#water, whichis cold and wet

#ether, which is the divine substance that makes up the heavenly spheres and heavenly bodies (stars and planets).

The four earthly elements have their natural place, when they are out of place they ave natural motion, requiring no external cause. The heavenly element has perpetual circular motion.

It may be doubted if any other thinker has contributed so much to the enlightenment of the world. He founded the sciences of Logic, Biology and Psychology. He anticipated the coming of the Industrial revolution a full two thousand years in advance by writing in his Politics, "If every instrument could accompllish its own work, obeying or anticipating the will of others,if the shuttle would weave, or the plectrum touch the lyre, without a hand to guide them, then chief workmen would not need assistants, nor masters slaves."

Aristotle is referred to as "The Philosopher" by Scholastic thinkers such as Thomas Aquinas. These types of thinkers blended Aristotelian philosophy with Christianity, bringing the thought of Ancient Greece into the Middle Ages. It required a repudiation of some Aristotelian principles for the sciences and the arts to free themselves for the discovery of modern scientific laws and empirical methods.

The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche has taken nearly all his political philosophy from Aristotle.

After the Roman period, Aristotle's works were by and large lost to the West for a second time. After much various raiding during Islamic "Jihad",Muslim scholars got hold of some of the Greek philosophers manuscripts making many commentaries on his work. They never attributed their findings to its author and claimed the ideas as their own, much as they did after Mohammed's men had raided the Hindus and stolen their manuscripts on the zero and algebrae.

The demand for Aristotle's works grew and translations were made into Latin, and the Greek manuscripts were returned to the West, stimulating a revival of Aristotelianism in Europe.



Monday 19 February 2007

Stresemann's Golden Era (1923-1929)
Gustav Stresemann was Reichskanzler for a brief period in 1923,serving as foreign minister during a relative period of stability for the Weimar Republic with beginnings of an economic recovery.
Stresemann's first move was to issue a new currency, the Rentenmark, to halt the extreme hyperinflation crippling German society and the economy. It was successful because Stresemann refused repeatedly to issue more currency, the cause of inflation. To further stabilise the economy, he reduced spending and bureaucracy while increasing taxes. He signed the Locarno Treaties with the Allied countries in 1925 as a means of restoring Germany's diplomatic status in Europe.
It was in this period the Dawes Plan was also created, tying reparations payments to Germany's ability to pay. Germany was admitted into the League of Nations, made agreements over it's western border, signed a neutrality pact- theKellogg-Briand pact- with Russia, and disarmament was brought to a halt. However this progress was funded by overseas loans, increasing the Nation's debts, while overall trade decreased and unemployment rose. Stresemann's reforms did not relieve the underlying weaknesses of Weimar but merely gave the appearance of a stable democracy.
Despite the progress made during these years, Stresemann was criticised by his opponents for his policy of "fulfilment" or compliance with the terms of the Versailes Treaty, and by the German people after the invasion of the Ruhr, in which he agreed to pay the reparations set by the treaty in order for the French troops to evacuate.
In 1929, Stresemann's death marked the end of the "Golden Era" of the Weimar Republic.
The Republic crumbles and Hitler's support rises(1930-1932)
Loss of credibility
The last years of the Weimar Republic were stamped by even more political instability than in the previous years and the administrations of Chancellors Bruning, Papen, Schleicher and Hitler were all Presidentially appointed dicatorships. On March 29,1930, Bruning was appointed Chancellor by Paul von Hindenburg after months of political lobbying on behalf of the military. The new government was expected to lead a political shift towards conservatism, based on the emergency powers granted to the Reichsprasident by the constitution, since it had no majority in the Reichstag.
After an unpopular bill to reform the Reich's finances was unsupported by the Reichstag, Hindenburg established the bill as an emergency decree based on Article 48 of the constitution. On July 18,1930, the bill was again invalidated by a slim majority in the Reichstag with the support of the SPD,KPD, the (then small) NSDAP and DNVP. Immediately afterwards, Bruning submitted to the Reichstag the president's decree that it would be dissolved.
The Reichstag general elections on September 14, 1930 resulted in an enormous political shift: 18.3% of the vote went to the Nazis, five times the percentage compared to 1928. This had devastating consequences for the Republic. There was no longer a majority in the Reichstag even for a Great Coalition of moderate parties, and it encouraged the supporters of the Nazis to bring out their claim to power with increasing violence and terror. After 1930, the Republic slid more and more into a state of potential civil war.
From 1930 t 1932, Bruning attempted to reform the devastated state without a majority in Parliament, governing with the help of the President's emergency decrees. During that time, the Great Depression reached its lowpoint. In line with liberal economic theory that less public spending would spur economic growth, Bruning drastically cut state expenditures, including in the social sector. He expected and accepted that the economic crisis would, for a while, deteriorate before things would improve. Among others, the Reich completely halted all public grants to the obligatory unemployment insurance(which had been introduced only in 1927), which reulted in higher contributions by the workers and fewer benefits for the unemployed. This was understandably an unpopular move on his part.
The economic downturn lasted until the second half of 1932, when there were first indications of a rebound. By this time though, the Weimar Republic had lost all credibility with the majority of Germans. While scholars greatly disagree about how Bruning's policy should be evaluated, it can safely be said that it contributed to the decline of the Republic. Whether there were alternatives at the time remains the subject of much debate.
The bulk of German capitalists and land-owners originally gave support to the conservative experiment: not from any personal liking for Bruning, but believing the conservatives would best serve their interests. As, however, the mass of the working class and also of the middle classes turned against Bruning, more of the great capitalists and landowners declared themselves in favour of his opponents - Hitler and Hugenberg. By late 1931 conservatism as a movement was dead, and the time was coming when Hindenburg and the Reichswehr would drop Bruning and come to terms with Hugenberg and Hitler. Hindeburg himself was no less a supporter of an anti-democratic counter-revolution represented by Hugenburg and Hitler.
On May 30, 1932, Bruning resigned afterno longer having Hindenburg's support. Five weeks earlier, Hndenburg had been re-elected Reichsprasident with Bruning's active support, running against Hitler (the president was directly elected by the people while the Reichskanzler was not).
Franz von Papen calls for elections
Hindenburg then appointed Franz von Papen as new Reichskanzler. Von Papen lifted the ban on the SA, imposed after the street riots, in an unsuccessful attempt to secure the backing of Hitler.
Papen was closely associated with the industrialist and land-working classes and pursued an extreme Conservative policy along Hindenburg's lines. He appointed as Reichswehr Minister Kurt von Schleicher and all of the members of the new cabinet were of the same political opinion as Hindenberg. This government was to be expected to assure itself o fthe co-operation of Hitler. Since the Republicans and Socialists were not yet ready to take action and the Conservatives had shot their political bolt, Hitler and Hindenberg were certain to achieve power.
Elections of July 1932
Since most parties opposed the new government, von Papen had the Reichstag dissolved and called for new elections. the general elections on Jyly 31, 1932, yielded major gains for the KPD and the Nazis, who won 37.2% of the vote, supplanting the Social Democrats as the largest party in the Reichstag.
July 1932 resulted in the question as to now what part the immense Nazi party would play in the government of the country. The Nazi party owed its huge increase to an influx of workers, unemployed, despairing peasants, and middle-class people. The millions of radical adherents at first forced the Party towards theLeft. They wanted a renewed Germany and a new organisation of German society. The left of the Nazi party strove desperately against any drift into the train of such capitalist and feudal reactionaries. Therefore Hitler refused ministry under Papen, and demanded the chancellorship for himself, but was rejected by Hindenburg on August 13, 1932. There was still no majority in the Reichstag for any government; as a result, the Reichstag was dissolved and elections took place once more in the hope that a stable majority would result.
November and "Socialist General" Schleicher
The Novermber 6, 1932 elections yielded 33.0% for the Nazis: it dropped 2 million voters. Franz von Papen stepped down, and was succeeded by General von Schleicher as Reichskanzler on December 3. The political army officer Schleicher, had developed in atmosphere of semi-obscurity and intrigue that encompassed the Republican military policy. He had for years been in the camp of those supporting the Conservative counter-revolution. Schleicher's bold and unsuccessful plan was to build a majority in the Reichstag by uniting the Trade Unionist left wings in the various parties, including that of the Nazis led by Gregor Strasser. This did not prove successful either.
In this brief Presidential Dictatorship entr'acte, Schleicher took the role of "Socialist General" and entered into relations with the Christian Trade Unions, the Left Nazis, and even with the Social Democrats. Schleicher's plan was for a sort of Labour Government under his Generalship. It was an utterly un-workable idea as the Reichswehr officers were hardly prepared to follow Schleicher on this path, and the working classs had a natural distrust of their future allies. Equally, Schleicher aroused hatred amongst the great capitalists and landowners by these plans. The SPD and KPD could have achieved success building on a Berlin transport strike.
Hitler learned from von Papen that the general had no authority to abolish the Reichstag parliament, whereas any majority of seats didn. The cabinet (under a previous interpretation of Article 48) ruled without a sitting Reichstag, which could vote only for its own dissolution. Hitler also learned that all past crippling Nazi debts were to be relieved by German big business.
On January 22, Hitler's efforts to persuade Oskar von Hindenburg (the President's son) included threats to bring criminal charges overestate taxation irregularities at the President's Neudeck estate (although 5000 extra acres were soon allotted to Hindenburg's property). Out maneuvered by von Papen and Hitler on plans for the new cabinet, and having lost Hindenburg's confidence, Schleicher asked for new elections. On January 28 von Papen described Hitler to Paul von Hindenburg as only a minority part of an alternative, von Papen - arranged government. The four great political movements, the SPD, the KPD, Centre, and the Nazis were in opposition. If this continued there was real danger that the Centre and Nazi parties would radicalize further, and that in the end a vast united national bolshevist front would be formed against the ruling system.
On 29 January Hitler and von Papen thwarted a last - minute threat of an officially - sanctioned Reichswehr takeover, and on 30 January 1933 Hindenburg accepted the new Papen- nationalist- Hitler coalition with the Nazis holding only three of eleven Cabinet seats. Later that day, the first cabinet meeting was attended by only two political parties, representing a minority in the Reichstag: the Nazis and the DNVP led by Alfred Hugenberg(196+52 seats). Eyeing the Catholic Centre Party's 70(+20BVP) seats, Hitler refused their leader's demands for constitutional "concessions" (amounting to protection) and planned for dissolution of the Reichstag.
Hindenburg, despite his misgivings about the Nazis' goals and about Hitler as a person, reluctantly agreed to Papen's theory that, with Nazi popular support on the wane, Hitler could now be controlled as chancellor. The date dubbed Machtergreifung(seizure of power) by the Nazi propaganda is commonly seen as the beginning of Nazi Germany.

Friday 16 February 2007

The Weimar Governors of Germany 1919-1933 continued.


The Spartacist uprising caused more attempts to establish Communism, by the Spartacist League and others in the streets of Berlin were put down by paramilitary Freikorp units consisting of volunteer soldiers. Bloddy streetfights culminated in the beating and shooting of Rosa Luxemburg and Liebknecht after their arrests on January 15. With the affirmation of Ebert the murderers were not tried before a court martial, leading to very lenient sentences, which did not exactly lead to more acceptance for Ebert from the radical left.

The National Assembly elections took place January 19, 1919. The USPD and KPD, were barely able to get themselves organised, leading to a solid majority of seats for the MSPD moderate forces. To avoid ongoing fights in Berlin, the Natioal Assembly convened in the city of Weimar, giving the future Repbulic its unofficial name. The Weimar Constitution created a republic under a semi-presidential system with the Reichstag elected by proportional representation. The Socialist and (Non-Socialist) Democratic parties obtained a solid 80 per cent of the vote.

During the debates in Weimar, fighting continued. A Soviet republic was declared in Munich, but was quickly put down by Freikorps and remnants of the regular army. the fall of the Munich Soviet Republic to these units, many of which were situated on the extreme right, resulted in the growth of far-right movements and organisations in Bavaria, including the Nazis, Organisation Consul, and societies of exiled Russian Monarchists. Sporadic fighting continued to flare up around the country. In eastern provinces, forces loyal to Germany's fallen Monarchy fought the repbulic, while militias of Polish nationalists fought for independence.

The socialist roots of Weimar

The carefully thought-out social and political legislaton introduced during the revoluton was generally unappreciated by the German working-class. the tow goals sought by the government, democratisation and social protection of the working clas, were never achieved. this has been attributed to a lack of pre-war political experience on the part of the Social Democrats. the government had little success in confronting the twin economic crises following the war.

The permanent ecomomic crisis was a result of lost pre-war industrial exports, the loss of supplies in raw materials and food stuffs from Alsace-Lorraine, Polish districts and the colonies along with worsening debt balances and reparations payments. Military-industrial activity had almost ceased, although controlled demobilisation kept unemployment at around one million. the fact that the Allies continued to blockade Germany until after the Treaty of Versailles did not help matters,either.

The allies permitted only low import levels of goods that most Germans could not afford. After four years of war and famine, many German workers were exhausted, physically impaired and discouraged. Millions were disenchanted withapitalism and hoping for a new era. Meanwhile the currency devalued.

The German peace delegation in France signed the Treaty of Versailles accepting mass reductions of the German military, unrealistically heavy war reparations payments, and the controversial "War Guilt Clause". Adolf Hitler later blamed the repbulic and its democracy for the oppressive terms of this treaty. The Repbulic's first Reichsprasident (Reich President), Freidrich Ebert of the SPD signed the new German constitution into law on August 11, 1919.

The early years: internal conflict (1919-1923)

The Republic was under great pressure from both left and right-wing extremists. The radical left accused the ruling Social Democrats of having betrayed the ideals of the workers' movement by preventing a communist revolution. Right-wing extremists were opposed to any democratic system, preferring an authoritarian state like the 1871 Empire. To further undermine the Republic's credibility the extremists of the right also blamed an alleged conspriacy of Socialist and Jews for Germany's defeat in World War 1.

For the next five years Germany's large cities sufferedppolitical violence between left-wing and right- wing groups, both of which committed violence and murder against innocent civilians and against each other,resulting in many deaths.

The worst of the violence was between right-wing paramilitaries called Freikorps and pro-Communist militias called the Red Guards, both of which admitted ex-soldiers into their ranks.

The Kapp Putsch took place on March 13, 1920, involving a group which took control of Berlin and installed Wolfgang Kapp(a right wing journalist). The government fled to Stuttgart and called for a general strike. The strike crippled Germany's ravaged economy and ended after only four days on March 17.

Inspired by general strikes, a communist uprising began and formed a "Red Army" and took control of the province. Other communist rebellions took place in Hmaburg and Saxony.

By 1923, the Repbulic claimed it could no longer afford the re-payments owed by the war in the Treaty of Versailles. More strikes occurred in the productive industries of mining and manufacturing. The strike meant no goods were being produced and his made the French so furious that they began to kill and exile protestors in the region.

Since striking workers were paid benefits by the state, much additional currency was printed, fueling a period of hyperinflation. Hyperinflation started when Germany had no goods to trade with. Printing money was the solution sought at that time, thoughthere are other better solutons to it, eg,borrowing money from the US(President Gustav Stresseman did this and Germany earned a precarious economic boom). This allowed Germany to pay war loans and reparations with worthless marks and helped ex great industialists to pay loans as well. This also lead to pay rise of workers, as well as businessmen whom wanted a profit outof it. Circulation of money rocketed and soon, the Germans discovered their money was worthless. the value of the Papiermark had declined from 4.2 per US dollar at the outbreak of World War 1 to 1 million per dollar by August 1923. On 15 November 1923, a new currency, the Rentenmark was introduced at the rate of 1 trillion (1,000,000,000,000) Papiermark for 1 Rentenmark. At that ime, 1 US dollar was equal to 4.2 Rentenmark. Reparation payments reusmed, and the Ruhr was returned to Germany.

Further pressure from the right came in 1923 with the Beer Hall Putsch, staged by Adolf Hitler in Munich. In 1920, the German Workers' Party had become the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP), nicknamed the Nazi Party, and would become a driving force in the collapse of Weimar. Hitler was named chairman of the party in July 1921. The Storm Division (Sturmabteilung or SA) was established in November 1921 and acted as Hitler's personal army. On November 8, 1923, the Kampfbund, in a pact with Erich Ludendorff, took over a meeting by Bavarian prime minister Gustav von Kahr at a beer hall in Munich. Ludendorff and Hitler declared a new government, planning to take control of Munich the following day. The 3,000 rebels were thwarted by 100 policemen. Hitler was arrested and sentenced to five years in prison, a minimum sentence for the charge and he serve less than eight months before his release. Following the failure of the Beer Hall Putsch, his imprisonment aaand subsequent release, Hitler focused on legal methods of gaining power.

Thursday 15 February 2007

The Weimar Republic governors of Germany from 1919 to 1933

A look on the cultural climate in Germany between the wars; the National Socialist regime, many think we are approaching the same scene in political history today in the Western World.
Known also as the Weimar period, the Republic was named after the city of Weimar, were a national assembly convened to produce a new constitution after the German Empire was abolished following the Nation's defeat in World War 1.
The "Deutches Reich" name was used by the German monarchy before 1919. "Weimar Republic" is an invention of historians. "Reich" used to mean Empire.
During a time of civil conflict, this was an attempt to establish liberal democracy into Germany, but failed with the advent of Adolph Hitler's Nazi Party in 1933.
Although technically the 1919 constitution was not invalidated until after World War 2, the legal measures taken by the Nazi government in 1933 (Gleichschanltun) destroyed the mechanisms of a typical democratic system, so 1933 is cited as the end of the Weimar Republic.
Controlled revolution: the establishment of the Repbulic (1918-1919)
A civil government was installed after it was clear that Germany had lost the first world war. In 1918 the 1871 constitution was amended to make the Reich a parliamentary democracy, which the government had refused for half a century,the Chancellor was now responsible to Parliament,and no longer to the Kaiser.
Obsolete was the idea to transform Germany into a constitutional monarch such as Britain as the country slid into a state of near-total chaos. Violence was rampant with psychologically wounded soldiers from the front and the forces of the political right and left fought not only each other, but among themsleves.
Without consultation the military command ordered the German High Seas Fleet to sortie: a useless military move and certain to bring peace negotiations to a halt. Ships crews mutinied,were arrested, which bought about a rebellion that swept aver most of Germany. Seamen, soldiers and worker, in solidarity with the arrested, began electing worker and soldier councils modelled after the soviets of the Russian Revolution of 1917; and seized military and civil powers in cities. The Revolution reached Munich casuing King Ludwig 3 to flee.
In contrast to Russia, the councils were not controlled by a communist party. Still, with the emergence of the Soviet Union, the rebellion caused great fear in the establishment down to the middle classes. The country seemed to be on the verge of a communist revolution.
At the time the political representation of the working clas was divide a faction had separated from the Social Democratic Party, the traditional working-clas party, calling themselves "Independent Social Democrats"(USPD) and leaning towards a socialist system. The "majority Social Democrats" (MSPD) tried to establish a regency by demanding the abdication of Emperor Wilhelm II . He refused, so Prince Max of Baden announced he had abdicated anyway. In a dubiously illegal move, Baden switched his powers to Friedrich Ebert, the leader of the MSPD, who shattered by the monarchy's fall, reluctantly accepted. Two communists, Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, (the Spartacist League) opposed the the new government confirmed by the Berlin worker and soldier council, the "Council of Poeple's Commissioners".
From November 1918 to January 1919, Germany was governed dicatatorially by the Council of People's Commissioners. In those three months, the government was extraordinarily active and issued a large amount of decrees. Athe same time, it's main activities were confined to certain spheres: the eight-hour day, labour reform,agricultural labour reform, right of civil-service associations, local municipality welfare relief,(split between Reich and States) and important national health insurance, re-instatement of demobilised workers, protection from arbitrary dismissal with appeal as a right, regulated wage agreement, and Universal suffrage from 20 years of Sozialdemokratische Republik" (The German Social- Democratic Republic) appeared in leaflets and on posters from this era, although this was never the official name of the country.
The Reichswehr and the Revolution
Ebert made an unesy pact with the OHL,(Supreme Army command) to ensure fledgling control over the country. The government would not attempt to reform the Army as long as the army swore to protect the state. This was considered a betrayal of workers' interests by the radical left wing. The new model Reichswehr armed forces, limited by the Treaty of Versailles to 100,000 army soldiers and 15,000 seamen, remained fully under the control of the German officer class despite its nominal re-organisation. The Army had a large amont of influence over the fate of the republic.
This also marked one of several steps that caused the permanent split in the working class' political representation in the SPD and Communists. The eventual fate of the Weimar Republic derived significantly from the general political incapacity of the German labour movement. The several strands within the central mass of the socialist movement adhered more to sentimental loyalty to alliances arising from chance than to any recognition of political necessity. Combined action on the part of the socialists was impossible without action from the millions of workers who stood midway between the parliamentarians and the ultra-leftists who supported the workers councils. Confusioadsa made acute the danger of extreme right and extreme left engaging in virulent conflict.
The split became final after Ebert called upon the OHL for troops to put down another Berlin army mutiny on November 23,1918 in which soldiers had captured the city's garrison commander and closed off the Reichskanzlei where the Council of People's Commissioners was situated. The ensuing street fighting was brutal with several dead and injured on both sides. This causedthe left wing to call for a split with the MSPD which, in their view, had joined with the Anti-Communist military to suppress the Revolution. The USPD thus left the council of People's Commissioners after only seven weeks. In December, the split deepened when the Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands(KPD) was formed out of a number of radical left-wing groups, including the radical left wng of the USPD and the Spartacist League group.
to be continued.

Sunday 11 February 2007

...the sanity of Liberals..??

We see this in their extreme and hysterical reaction to those who disagree with them, their apparent hatred of Western civilisation, of Israel, of free speech, traditional education, our history and the leaders who helped make us what we are, of religion and of America - both internally and externally. And whilst they are busy hating the very society and culture which enables them to parasitically survive and prosper we see their love affair with all the ideologies that threaten our society, manifested in pro third- world immigration, multiculturalism, radical feminism and until very recently, Communism (oh, if only they could have made their economy work), and, of course, Islam.
And here the first of their varied pathological contradictions is exposed for the sane world to see - how is it possible for them to sympathise with Islam, a political ideology that runs counter to every issue they apparently deem of transcendental importance? One of the pet word of abuse that the Liberal love to smear their opponents with is Nazi yet are they so blind they cannot differentiate between the white Nazis of 1940 that we "right wing" classical liberalists went to war witha and the brown Nazis of 2007 so admired by the "left wing" liberals of today?
Just look at the comparisons; Nazism was a racially supremacist, totalitarian, Messianic movement with an avowed aim of global domination; an ambition for which they were happy to use military force. They genuinely believed they were the master race and all others the sub- race. They promoted their ideology via overt propaganda in the brainwashing of their children; they wished to eradicate Jews and homosexuals; they thought women fit only for childbirth, the kitchen and the bedroom; and, finally, they thought nothing of killing their critics. Islam is...exactly the same. It is the 21st Century reincarnation of the Nazi Party and as every white European is now the new Jew or a member of the new sub -race, so Islam becomes our worst possible sweat-soaked ngithmare as an enemy. And the Liberal's new best friend.
Not content with enusring that a new Nazi party is fostered and encouraged to grow within the West, the Liberal also works to ensure that his own society is traduced and destroyed from within. He does this by accepting the edicts of subversion planted by Soviet Moscow, with whose ideology and global ambitions they were not entirely unsympathetic. It says a great deal about the Liberal that he sympathises with an ideology penned by a man with an unhappy childhood and a catastrophic adult life whose bearded scribbling led to a flawed revolution carried out in the wrong country at the wrong time which subsequently reduced the Soviet working man (at the expense of millions of deaths) to queuing for bread in Moscow whilst the capitalist working man was queuing for beer in Ibiza.
When the Communists were forced - purely by geographical necessity to waylay their tanks used so successfully in the Baltic States, Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia, they turned instead to the use of Western liberals as their fellow travellers/useful idiots to create economic and cultural mayhem within their own countries, as a prelude to the possible anarchic emergence of their longed for Communist International. Then Western liberals attempted to destroy blue-collar commerce by the ruining of education through "progressive" educational techniques. In keeping with their Soviet counterparts they sought, and still seek, to abolish religion and morality, and -via feminism - the family.
They do this, as we well know, by their capture of the media and educational establishments within which they use the same brainwashing techniques geared toward the same ends as Hitler, Lenin, Stalin and Mao (see: Thomas Sowell,Inside American Education). The political brainwashing of children is a manifestation found only in totlitarian societies. With past dictators it was a necessity to enable permanent power; in the West today it portends a coming dictatorship,why else would they do it? Although Lenin, the propagandist ancestors of today's BBC or CNN, was the originator of the brainwashing of children it was difficult, given the technology of the time, to systematically brainwash the adults, but the BBC and CNN have simply taken his practice and adapted it to an international, far reaching audience, surpassing even Hitler.
Hitler, whilst adopting the Lenin's techniques for indoctrinatin children, took adult indoctrination to a whole new leve, as stated by Albert Speer, Hitler's Minister for Armaments: Hitler's dictatorship differed in one fundamental point from all its predecessors in history, it was the first dictatorship in the present period of modern technology development, a dicatorship which made complete use of of all technical means for the domination of its own country. Through technical development like the radio and the loudspeaker, eighty million people were deprived of independent thought..." What he could have done with twenty- four hour TV does not really beg the question because CNN and the BBC are doing it anyway, subtly perhaps, but this is an even greater method given time.
Hitler was intent on using such propagand in order to form the Master Race, Lenin the New Socialist Man, but what exactly does the Leberal today wish to bring about? It is not, despite his insistence, The One World, Socialist, Multicultural Man, because this is where the Liberal deviates from the slavish following of his ideological ancestors- who at least attempted to advance their own countries- and sets up the indigeous population of his own country as the hate figure to be vilified. Hate figures are always necessary in warfare or dictatorship be it Oceania, the bourgeoisie or the Jew. The white, male, heterosexual, Judaeo-Christian European now fulfils this model by dint of his imperial past and his supposed present day oppression/exploitation of non-whites, females and homosexuals.
That the lumpen masses are relatively unconcerned is due not merely to their lack of cogent reasoning but to their numerical advantage. Why should they feel threatened by people they seldom see and via media censorship, rarely hear about? But deomographics suggest that the white European will become a minority all across the West within the next fifty years, in some countries even sooner. This reality, coupled with our acceptance of the type of abuse reserved historically for Hitler's Jew and Lenin's middle/ upper - classes should casue us grave reservations. What on earth is the Liberal thinking of when he introduces "Anti-Racist" maths into school lessons or "Whiteness Studies" into university lectures? Can he not see where this leads, how can he be so blind?
Whilst they are busy beavering away at these destructive antics, the Liberal will demonise, vilify and intimidate,both verbally and physically any opponents who stand in his way. By such repressive actions he casts himself into the same mould as Hitler, who once said: "A systematically one sided argument must be adopted towards every problem that has to be dealt with. He must never admit that he might be wrong, or that people with a different point of view might be right. Opponents shouldnot be argued with; they should be attacked, shouted down, or if they become too much of a nuisance, liquidated."
The Liberal's repressive attitude toward free speech can be seen on the University campuses across the West today, even if liquidation is a step too far. Hilary Clinton was/ is a firm advocate of such behaviour, having immersed herself as a none - too - attractive youth in "Rules For Radicals" by Saul Alinksy. Yet whilst they shoult down and intimidate the defenders of Western society, they seem blissfully unaware of the destruction their policies have inflicted on the young, the poor and the elderly - the very people the Liberal purports to represent, and the future international consequences that their peculiar ideology of multiculturalism can only bring about.
It is not conservative policy that has reuslted in millions of our children leaving school ill- equipped to succeed in our First World ecomony, is not conservative policy that brainwashes these children into a blindness to the racial dangers they will face in later years. It is not conservative policy that causes drug - addicted lower classes to live in crime and squalor whilst the metropolitan liberal elites indulge themselves with recreational drugs, it is not conservative policy that has bought about the destruction of the family and the serial sexual abuse perpetrated by this month's "mummy's new boyfriend". It is not conservative policy that confines the elderly to their houses for fear of becoming the victims of violent, moral -free children, and it is not conservative policy that allows these feral children to have no fear of the police. It is not conservative policy that has turned the West into an outpost of Arabia and it is not conservative policy that criminaliszes any person who dares point out any of the above.
Not only is the Liberal apparently unaware of such destruction, he also appears unaware of where this will lead. This is another pathological contradiction that so assuages his ideology. By any objective analysis the path he has set Western society upon can only end in anarcy and racial- based civil war, out of which must arise either an Islamic West or a counterrevolution led at best by a Pinochet, at worst a Hitler. From cohesion and peace of the 1950's we are descending into the bitter ideological struggles of the 1930's Weimar Republic, the reds versus brownshirts, the liberal left versus the "far" right. Whichever is the winner, there can be only one absolute guarantee; the liberal infidel and the liberal traitor will be the first up against the wall. How can they be so blind?
Perhpas the answer to this lies in Tammy Bruce's book "The Death of Right and Wrong" which ranks as a necessary read in her exposure of damage caused by liberal ideology. Tammy Bruce was a high-ranking activist in the National Association of Women (NOW) but became so disgusted by their attitudes that she broke ranks and started to writed from the compassionate "right". She believes the driving force of the Liberal to be "Malignant Narcissism", a mental condition attributal to childhood abuse and trauma inflicted by parents, authority figures, peers.
Bruce quotes psychoanalyst Otto Kernber, who describes it thus: "The pathological idealisation of the self as an aggressive self clinical disease is called malignant narcissism. And this is very much connected with evil and a number of clinical forms that evil takes, such as the pleasure and enjoyment in controlling others, in making them suffer, in destroying them, or the casual pleasure in using others' trust and confidence and love to exploit them and to destroy them."
Tammy Bruce then goes to say in her own words: "The core components of this syndrome are pathological narcissism, paranoid traits and aggression. Self - reservation, self - promotion and maintaining power are all traits that prevail in the malignant narcissist. The people are as issues they supposedly serve exist only to be exploited for their won benefit".
Nazism coupled with Communism, whilst classical liberalism is the ideology of we right wing opponents. They are insane, or so utterly evil that that in itelf is a form of insanity.
We scribblers and readers of the supposed political "right" are not by nature terribly interested in politics. We were never radicals, activists, wannabe revolutionaries. That we exist today is purely a reaction to the Liberal's attempts to bring down the sociey in which we live. Without them I would suggest that the vast majority of us would be content to mow our lawns, raise our families, pay taxes, give to charity and support benign political parties. YOU the Liberal have bought us into existence. Just as a peaceful man many be driven to assault a paedophile that molests his child, so we exist as a counter to your ongoing damage to our countries and by default our children and future children. Your belief that we will go quietly nto the night isonly further evidence of your arrogant disconnection from reality or sanity.
But now, with the advent of the Internet we have access to information that validates what we suspected but could not prove, and the means of using this information to spread and facilitate a defence. We've runbled you, my liberal friend, you can no longer censor us out of your insane destruction of our countries and our cultures. You have lost your grip on the means of information and if you think that you are the self righteously angry defenders of the oppressed, wll, you ain't seen nothing yet. You have no idea how oppressed you make us feel, now angry we are, or how may we number. this justifiable anger is directed principally at the malignant narcissist liberal whose intention has always been to destroy, but you, the middle class liberals filled not with hate but with well - intentioned guilt must understand that you have been duped, your alliance with politically correct liberalism is just as destructive, and we have had enough.
You, the Liberal, must understand that the people whose race and culture is being slowly swept away by politically correct liberalism are the very people who built the civilisation you have inherited. If this vivilisation were to die we would become a ribal Iraq, Somalia or Yugoslavea. So I implore you, recognise the reality of what is happening, reappraise our idea of liberalism and channel your guilt not into the past but into the furture, the guilt you would surely feel - you must surely feel - if you allowed your children and your grandchildren to inherit a Third World society, with all that implies, bought about by - The Liberal.

Saturday 10 February 2007

British Author

An Essay by Paul Weston
Questioning the Sanity of Liberals
Is it possible to be well adjusted, attractive, educated, successful, and liberal? Alternatively,is it possible to be both Politically Correct and liberal at the same time? In order to understand the peculiar contradictions of contemporary liberalism it is necessary first to understand the meaning of classical liberalism circa 1900 and the liberalism of the West in 2007.
Classical liberalism meant a belief in the deomcratic process, freedom of the press, freedom of expression, equality of opportunity (although not quite couched in such terms), the presumption of innocence, small government, the individual before the group, religious freedom, trial by jury, habeas corpus, the rights of the child, an obligation to help the genuinely disadvantaged in society and, generally speaking, a live and let live laissez -faire attitude. It was the product of many hundreds of years of gradual evolution encompassing Christianity, the reformation, the enlightenment, common law, the philosophy of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke It was a cause for the good and the term liberal one to be worn with pride.
How does this square with the self confessed metropolitan liberals of today? Imagine the smooth young advertising executive, hosting a dinner party in Greenwich village or Notting Hill, suddenly announcing to his Armani-clad coterie of media and public relations friends that whilst holding himself up as a liberal, he disapproved of mass immigration, multiculturalism, state education's socialist propaganda, the European Union, same- sex marriage, homosexual adoption, atheism and feminism.
As jaws dropped around the table some embarrassed diners would make their polite excuses and fumble for the keys to their oh so green Toyota Prius, whilst others, white-faced and shaking with genuine anger, would accuse him of racial bigotry, sexual bigotry, nationalism,religious fundamentalism and xenophobia. Yet whilst these proud young members of the privileged cosseted elite may believe that they and they alone hold the moral credentials that personify the term liberal, they have to understand that all their beliefs are the antithesis fo true liberalism that they have followed a long and winding path from the classical liberalism of 1900 to that which they are today- Totalitarian and Fascistic. In short they had mutated from Classical Liberalism to Politically correct Liberalism.
to be continued....